Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Just a little more Christmas cheer before the holiday weekend. Last year we dressed up Georgia as a Christmas Elf and I can’t believe I never posted the pictures. Enjoy and have a wonderful holiday!

Santa Baby

This year for our Christmas cards, we dressed up Georgia in a Santa hat with her red Christmas sweater. Isn’t she ridiculously cute and adorable?

And here are a few outtakes too...

Vacation Ahoy

It’s that time of year again, where I take off from work for an extended staycation in honor of the holiday season. A full 17 beautiful days to celebrate, bake, relax, spend time with friends and family, and of course work on some house projects. Posting will be sporadic and irregular, but will return to normal in January.

Holiday Decor: Inside at Night

With all of the white twinkle lights everywhere, our house looks really pretty at night. I love the white lights mixed with the colored lights on the tree - I think it really makes the tree glow.

The lights make me really happy. I know it wouldn’t be special anymore if I left them up all year round (not to mention a bit tacky), but sometimes on quiet nights sitting with only the twinkle lights on... it’s tempting to want it like this all the time. 

Holiday Decor: Outside

This year I decided to take our holiday decor up a notch, I was feeling ambitious on an usually mild day. In addition to the white lights and a festive red berry wreathe, we also added red ribbon stripes on our two posts like candy canes. I love the way the house looks with all the little lights.

Holiday Decor: Inside

The house is decorated for Christmas and I think it’s quite lovely. I love making everything all gaudy and fun. It’s the one time of year where the cheesy, mismatched, garish and overcrowded work beautifully under the guise of festive. For the entire month of December I love to bask in the glow of all that is glittery.

This year I did more lights. A lot more lights. Lights and garlands on the tops of the bookcases in the living room and strung over the doorway. Lights and garlands on the media stand in the sunroom. Lights and garlands on top of the hutch in the dining room.

We bought a tree and decorated it over the weekend. Last year we liked having our Christmas tree in the sun room, though this year it was a lot tighter with all of the furniture in it. Instead of being placed in the center of the room, we turned off the radiator and pushed it to the side. This way we can still see it from the living room and dining room, and we can still sit on the couch in the sunroom.

I also did my usual garland and lights up the stairs in the living room, and a mini tree with ornaments at the top of the stairs.

And of course it's all about the details. Ribbons. Bowls of pinecones with sparkly ribbons and ornaments. Festive scented candles. Bright red wreathes. Vases and bowls filled with pretty ornaments on tables and tucked inside bookshelves. I like to put a little something in each room, though I concentrate most of my efforts where it will have the most impact in the main living space.

Ornaments

We decorated the tree and I pulled out all of the Christmas ornaments. It's a crazy collection of happy memories and bright colors. Mostly the ornaments are pretty decorative balls and a menagerie of animals. I don’t know what it is about animal ornaments, but they make my heart flutter. The selection this year at Anthropologie is making me drool. What could be better than a whale, walrus, fox, or glittery armadillo?

Curious George

Our little monkey always likes to help (& sniff) all of our current projects.
 

Aphids Again (Round 3)

The battle continues. Two days after I finished wiping down each leaf and stem with dipped Q-tips, my triumph deflated - the plant was covered again. A whole new generation hatched from microscopic eggs I must have missed somewhere. Ugh. It was time for the big guns.

So I went to the local gardening store that has a big organic section and asked the sales person for the safest option for indoor plants to get rid of aphids and mites. And Mike took the trees outside on an unusually warm evening and sprayed both trees and the plant next to them so that everything was covered on top and the undersides of the leaves, plus the stems and branches.

And now we wait. The bottle says it usually zaps them in one application, though we can reapply in 1-2 weeks if need be.

Radiator Progress

Here’s a little preview of the radiator progress. You can see that the pieces for the dining room cover and the guest room cover have been cut to fit flush with the wall over the trim and have been primed. The center holes for the screens have been cut as well. Next Mike will put the pieces together and give the whole thing a coat of paint and polyurethane.

Of course because the pieces are drying in the messy garage, you can see how far we have to go organizing this space. We’re working on it... but still have a long way to go. It’s really hard to get a lot of projects done around the holidays!

Making an Ornament

This is officially one year late, but I wanted to make an ornament to commemorate the year we bought our first house. I thought making it would be more appropriate than buying one, since we are such avid DIYers. I meant to do this project last year, but we were so busy and there was too much chaos with half the house still a mess.

I bought a pack of white sculpy clay and rolled it out into a circle. I took my house key and pressed it into the clay to make an impression.

Then I poked a hole for a string with a drinking straw and baked it at 275 degrees as per the instructions. Once it was hard and cool, I painted on the date of when we bought our little yellow house - June 1, 2010. Now we just need to go out and get a Christmas tree to hang it on...

Potted Amaryllis Bulbs

A blooming amaryllis from last year

I love having flowers to brighten up the middle of winter, when it’s dark all the time and freezing cold. Winter is hard - the holidays are over, the sparkle packed away and spring feels incredibly far off. The amaryllis is an ideal winter plant - cheerful and fairly easy to care for.

It takes 6-8 weeks for the bulbs/plants to bloom so it requires a little forethought. This year I have 2 - a plant that I’ve left dormant in the basement (they like to be ignored in a cool dark place for a couple of months before starting a new cycle) and a “new” bulb passed on to me from someone who no longer wanted it.

Over the weekend I brought my old plant up from the basement, trimmed off the dead leaves and gave it a good watering. I also planted the new bulb in a pot with some dirt, surprisingly it was already sprouting a bit. They should bloom in mid to late January, the perfect time for a little color.

(Note: While I planted the bulbs outside for less mess, I immediately brought them indoors to live)

Aphids Abolished (Hopefully)

Thank you to everyone who offered help with the aphids on my lemon tree. The advice from my favorite source and the consensus seemed to agree - I had to manually remove the remaining aphids from the leaves and stems if I wasn’t going to use pesticides. Q-tips were recommended, so that’s what a I used.

Of course this was much easier in my mind, and it turned into quite a labor intensive project. The tree has so many leaves! And the problem turned out to be much worse than I initially thought - there were aphids everywhere, on both sides of the leaves and stems. Every single leaf was contaminated. It took hours and hours and hours (luckily aphids don’t seem to move that fast) and a ton of Q-tips. See how dirty those Q-tips are? That gunk is actually squashed aphid parts. The leaves are ones I accidentally pulled off in the process (oops).

Next up: the lime tree. Luckily there are almost no aphids on this one, but I still have to go over every leaf to make sure...